Fuller backs new choice regulation

By Alan J. Borsuk, Journal Sentinel, Inc

Published on: 3/26/2009

Calling this a potentially historic moment in Milwaukee education, a key leader of the private school voucher movement called Thursday for major increases in regulation of the participating schools and for a new focus on quality across all the channels of schooling in the city.

Howard Fuller, the former Milwaukee Public Schools superintendent who is now a central figure nationally in advocating for school choice, said he wants school leaders to join with Gov. Jim Doyle, legislative leaders and others in working out new ways to assure that students of all kinds have quality teachers in quality schools.

"We can't just keep wringing our hands about these terrible schools," Fuller said. "We have a moral responsibility to our children to not accept that."

He said he believes Doyle is seeking higher quality and more accountability and transparency for the 120 private schools in Milwaukee that have more than 20,000 students attending, thanks to publicly funded vouchers. Fuller said he was in general agreement on those goals.

Doyle has presented "an opportunity to come together and do something that is truly constructive for our children," Fuller said. "I think it is one of those historic moments that don't come all the time."

Carla Vigue, a spokeswoman for Doyle, responded: "The governor has worked for the past couple of years to ensure that the voucher program is more accountable and transparent, to help equalize the Milwaukee taxpayer cost for MPCP (voucher) students with the cost of MPS students, and to improve the quality of all schools in the state. It's good to see that Howard Fuller is finally on board with the governor's efforts."

Fuller was reacting both to a new set of studies of the voucher program and to a dramatically different situation for voucher supporters in the state Capitol.

The studies, reported in Thursday's Journal Sentinel and officially released at a breakfast meeting Thursday, showed there is little difference between the academic performance and progress of students in the voucher schools and in MPS.

Changes seem likely

In Madison, with both houses of the Legislature now controlled by Democrats, prospects are strong for passage of legislation pushed by critics of the voucher program that would impose stricter rules on many fronts. Such proposal have not passed in recent years because Republicans controlled at least one house of the Legislature, and voucher leaders - including Fuller - resisted many of them.

In his state budget, Doyle called for changes in the voucher program, including requiring teachers to meet higher qualification standards and requiring the voucher schools to give standardized tests and report the results publicly.

"Many of the provisions he has in there are sensible and reasonable, and we ought to do this," Fuller said.

But, he said, he wants to be sure that changes do not have "the unintended consequence of driving out the good schools."

Some private school leaders have been concerned, for example, about a proposal from Doyle that would require their governance meetings to be open to the public and many of their records to be public. Fuller said such rules could lead some top performing schools to either close or to cut off allowing voucher students to attend.

The new studies did not include school-by-school results but said it is clear that there is a set of voucher schools that are highly successful, while the majority of schools are getting more modest results.

"We can't afford to lose any good schools out of our portfolio of schools," Fuller said, saying he was referring to top schools in MPS as well as voucher schools and charter schools.

Reacting to the new research, largely done by researchers from the University of Arkansas, Fuller said:

"The big thing the studies say to me is we're still having unacceptable results with a large number of our poorest children, no matter whether they're in Milwaukee Public Schools or whether they're in the private schools."

Reacting to specific proposals made by Doyle, Fuller said, "Who can argue with the need to have standards for how kids move from one grade level to another?"

He said the same was true for such ideas as setting stricter standards for graduation, annual hours of instruction and handling of student records in a standardized way that allows such things as school transfers to be made smoothly.

"We've got to figure out a way to stop people (such as those) from starting schools in the first place," Fuller said. "Who in their right mind would argue that we don't have to do something like that?"

State law requires voucher school teachers to have high school diplomas. Fuller said, "Who could argue with a notion of a bachelor's degree for teachers?"

What about the private schools giving state standardized tests and making the results public?

"We clearly have to do that," he said.

He said a big concern is with the quality of the current state test, the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination. He called it "a low-level test" and said some of the tests now used by private schools are better.

State DPI officials, however, are making plans to overhaul the state test in the next several years.

Other key supporters of the voucher movement who were at the Thursday event at which the new research was presented said they generally agreed with Fuller's goals but were less emphatic than he was in pushing for them.

Tim Sheehy, president of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce, said, "This is a big devil-in-the-details matter." He said he agreed that more needed to be done to assure quality in the voucher schools, and that there was a chance to work out new agreements. But there is a long way to go to reach agreement with political leaders in Madison.